


Sometimes the Fast Lane Hits a Fork

by queersuperteens (ruffboi)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode AU: s04e12 The Stolen Earth, Episode: s04e12 The Stolen Earth, Gen, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 09:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3285260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/queersuperteens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She rematerialized in an intersection somewhere in London (she assumed) - the streets were empty, and completely silent.  The Daleks had already been through this area, apparently, and didn't feel the need to hang around.  She didn't lower her weapon, though - she knew better than that.</p><p>The TARDIS wasn't anywhere to be seen.  Neither was the Doctor.</p><p>Originally written and posted in 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes the Fast Lane Hits a Fork

**Author's Note:**

> There is a brief description of Jack being tortured, that is no more intense than anything on Torchwood, and not overly explicit. Just as a warning.

"Control, take me to the Doctor," Rose said, and she couldn't help but strike a slightly heroic pose. With Wilf looking at her like she was some sort of superhero, and calling her 'sweetheart'... it was like he was _her_ granddad, and she wanted to be that superhero he seemed to think she was.

She rematerialized in an intersection somewhere in London (she assumed) - the streets were empty, and completely silent. The Daleks had already been through this area, apparently, and didn't feel the need to hang around. She didn't lower her weapon, though - she knew better than that.

The TARDIS wasn't anywhere to be seen. Neither was the Doctor.

"It's not _close_ enough," she murmured to herself, looking down the streets, trying to decide which way to go. "Which way?" One street sloped up, and crested a bit of hill, while two others continued flat and the last sloped down and curved out of sight. She didn't see anything down the flat streets, so she had two options.

After a moment of weighing her options, she went down. The curve was closer than the top of the hill, she reasoned, so if it was the wrong direction, she'd know sooner (hopefully) and could turn around. She jogged down the hill, and it took less than a minute to reach the bend in the road. It was only a slight curve, but it had been obscured by trees from her original position.

There was nothing around the bend. Rose groaned in frustration, and turned around to start back up the hill. She'd hardly taken two steps when she heard a faint, distant sound, too familiar for comfort.

"EX-TER-MI-NATE!"

Two shots fired, maybe three. Rose threw caution to the wind and sprinted up the hill. Another shot, not fired by a Dalek, just as she crested the top of the hill, and before she could take in the scene, she heard a painfully familiar voice. "Doctor! _Doctor_!" She slowed to a stop a few metres away from the scene - a smoking Dalek shell off to the side, the TARDIS a little ways back, and Jack Harkness shaking one of the bodies in the road.

The Doctor. Donna Noble. Both dead. The Doctor didn't have any time to regenerate, it looked like, considering he was... very much dead, and there was no glowing or iridescent light or any sign at _all_ that he was anything but dead.

"I'm too late," she said, shocked, staring, and Jack's head snapped up at the sound.

" _Rose_?" he asked, his voice strained. She couldn't respond, couldn't tear her eyes away from the Doctor's body even as Jack stood and reached out to grab her shoulder. "Rose," he repeated, trying to get her attention, and she finally managed to look away from the Doctor, looking up at Jack.

He was older than she remembered - not so much physically, but... it was there, in his eyes. Of course, so was she, but not so obviously. He looked like he'd lived through wars. Maybe he had.

"You're running Torchwood," she said after a moment, her voice carefully controlled.

"Yeah," he responded, his tone almost identical, not questioning how she knew. His hand never left her shoulder, clutching it like he was afraid one of them would disappear if he let go. "I thought you were trapped in a parallel world."

"I was. Not anymore." She paused, tilted her head a bit. "I thought you were dead."

"I was," he said, his lips twisting into a bitter smile. "Not anymore." Something in his tone hinted at a completely un-funny joke that she wasn't getting. She didn't care. It was _Jack_ , her Jack, and even though she'd known for a while now that he wasn't actually dead, it was one thing to know and another to have him right in front of her.

With a soft cry, she launched herself at him, ignoring the huge guns both of them were holding and throwing her arms around his neck. He held her tightly for a moment, not saying a word, and then sighed deeply.

"We'd better... get them into the TARDIS," he said as he stepped back, all business. "Then we have to get back to Torchwood. They need to know."

"Yeah," Rose said, her voice wobbling a little. She swung the gun around so it was hanging against her back, out of the way, and hooked her arms under Donna's. She was heavy, but not too heavy, and though she felt bad letting the other woman's feet drag, she couldn't do anything about it. She backed her way towards the TARDIS, whose doors swung open of their own accord. Rose didn't stop to be startled at it, but continued inside.

Jack followed, the Doctor's body cradled like a child's in his arms. They put the bodies behind the struts, out of the way, and then hovered between the console and the doorway for a moment.

"Can you fly it?" Rose asked after a moment.

"Isomorphic controls," Jack said, rubbing a hand over his face. "They'd only work for me if the Doctor was here letting me run it. I never knew enough to pilot it on my own, anyway," he added.

Both of them pointedly avoided looking at the bodies behind them.

"We might be able to get the screens working again," Rose suggested. "So we can see what's going on, contact... everyone."

"Yeah." Jack strode over to the console as if nothing was wrong, and pushed a few buttons, pulled a few levers. Rose noticed that the lights were steadily getting dimmer, and her heart broke a little. She'd seen the TARDIS after the Doctor's death before, in the parallel world that had formed around Donna. "I can't get anything pulled up," Jack said finally. Rose walked over next to him, peering at the screen. It was flickering on and off, Gallifreyan symbols visible sometimes, unreadable. She reached out to touch the TARDIS, resting her hand near the rotor. There was a soft whirring, and Rose could almost hear something like music in the back of her mind.

"We need to be able to see, just for a moment," she murmured. There was a pause, and the screen flickered to life, the image blurry, the audio full of static, but there.

"--ck? Jack a---ou there?"

"Martha!" Jack pulled the screen towards him, and Rose stepped back a little. She didn't know this woman, it would probably be better for Jack to deal with her.

"--ou're br---ng up--"

"Give me a second," Jack said, punching a couple of buttons. The image fizzed out, then came back clearer. Relief washed over Jack's face, and Rose couldn't help but feel a little jealous - but just a little. Now wasn't the time to be young and petty. "There, can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," Martha replied. "You're on the TARDIS! Where is he, did you find him?" She looked so hopeful. Of course she did, though - the Doctor was their only hope for survival.

Jack's expression hardened, and his voice softened. "I didn't get there in time. Martha... I'm sorry." The hope on the woman's face melted away, heartache and despair replacing them.

"Oh god... No, he... he can't be. He _can't_ be."

"Martha, I need you to tell me what's going on," Jack pushed ahead. "Have you heard anything from Gwen and Ianto or Sarah Jane?

"I lost contact with Torchwood when the Daleks got in," she said, swallowing hard. "I'm still on with Luke - he said Sarah Jane left to find the Doctor. You haven't run into her, have you?"

"No, but I'll keep an eye out." Jack glanced over at Rose and motioned her over. "By the way, Martha, this is Rose Tyler. Rose, meet Dr. Martha Jones."

Martha gaped for a moment, and Rose attempted a pained smile. "Nice to meet you. Not very good timing."

"Yeah," Martha agreed, shaking off her apparent shock. "Jack, what are we going to do?"

"I'm going to send Rose to you," Jack said, shooting Rose a preemptive 'don't argue with me' look. "I'll go back to Torchwood and see what I can do there. If we can take back the hub, we'll contact you, otherwise..."

"Right," Martha said. "I'll be waiting, then." The connection cut out, and Rose turned to glare a little at Jack. 

"I can help," she said, a little hurt that he was sending her away like a child who needed protecting. Even when he'd met her, she wasn't anything of the sort. Except for on the Game Station, apparently. "Let me come to Cardiff with you."

" _No_ ," Jack said firmly. "I can't die. It's a long story and maybe I'll explain it one day, but I can't die. If the Daleks are still there, there's a good chance they'll get a shot or two in, probably more."

Rose sighed and rubbed her nose for a moment, then nodded. "Alright. Where am I going?"

*

"Sylvia, I promise, it's the safest possible place you can be," Rose said, trying to sound reassuring. "You've just got to come with me, all right?"

"I'm not leaving my house!" Sylvia protested stubbornly, for what seemed like the hundredth time. Rose resisted the urge to knock her unconscious. Barely.

"Use your _head_ , darling!" Wilf said, trying to convince her. "They've got weapons! They can protect us!"

"Is Donna there?" Sylvia asked, still reluctant. She was warming slowly, but Rose didn't have _time_. She didn't have time to deal with grieving family, so she hadn't told them Donna was dead. She didn't have time to deal with hopeless panic, so she didn't tell them the Doctor was dead. She just needed to get them somewhere they had a chance of surviving, however slim that chance was.

"Please, Sylvia, we _really_ don't have time for this. They are _coming_." A bit of an exaggeration, because the Noble house was at least an hour away from a second sweep, but Rose needed them out _now_ , because she needed to be back at Sarah Jane's _now_.

"Oh, fine," Sylvia stood, reluctantly. "Just let me get some of my things..."

"No time!" Rose said quickly, grabbing her arm and all but dragging her out. "We've got to get back to the safe house." Safe house. It was hardly that, just Sarah Jane Smith's house, with it's computer system, 'Mr. Smith'. The words were good for convincing the Nobles to come with her, though, so she used them.

"But I don't even have a toothbrush!"

"We're being attacked by aliens and you're worried about proper dental hygiene?" Wilf asked incredulously as they bundled into Martha's car.

Rose just sighed and floored the gas.

*

Rose pulled Martha aside the moment she got the Nobles unloaded and settled in the living room of Sarah Jane's house. "Where's your mum?" she asked, worried.

Martha's jaw set in an obvious attempt not to show how upset she was. "She wouldn't come. Said she had to go find my brother and sister. Haven't been able to get her on her mobile for the past half hour."

"God," Rose grimaced. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Martha said flatly. Which of course meant she wasn't, but she didn't want to talk about it. There wasn't time to mourn, and both of them knew it They just had to keep going.

"Right. Any word from Jack?" Rose asked softly.

"Nothing," Martha replied. "I haven't been able to reach Sarah Jane, either. I think... I think we might be on our own."

"We've got to have a plan, then," Rose said. "What to do wh-- _if_ the Daleks show up. Where the safest place in the house is. How long we can last without going out."

"Luke said there's enough food for a couple days, at least," Martha said, frowning thoughtfully. "And I think the cellar's probably the safest place."

"Of course, since the computer's in the attic," Rose grumbled, and groaned, rubbing her face. "All right. We need to be contactable. That means attic. I don't think either of us should be up there alone. And I really don't think we should send the Nobles and Luke downstairs by themselves. I think Sylvia would have a panic attack and Wilf would try to come up with a battle plan that we can't pull off."

Martha laughed a littled, strained, and nodded. "Attic it is, then." She turned and strode back into the living room. "Right, we're gonna all move up to the attic now, safest place in the house. We've got to get some food together and all get upstairs, everyone helps. Mrs. Noble, that means you, too!" Rose heard her add when Sylvia started to complain.

This, Rose decided, was going to be a particularly long and miserable night.

*

Amazingly, two hours passed, sitting up in the attic, before anyone asked about Donna. Rose didn't want to discuss it if at all possible, but... well, she couldn't very well avoid questions forever. So when Wilf came and sat next to her, she knew what was going to come next. "Rose... where's Donna? Where's my girl?" he asked softly, almost whispering.

Rose didn't know Donna well, just what she'd seen of her in the parallel world, what she knew about her before she met her. It still took everything in her not to let tears well up when she responded. "She's... she's gone, Wilf. Her and the Doctor. They're gone."

"What, they... they just left us?" Wilf asked, almost desperately. He knew what she meant, Rose could tell, but who wanted to believe that someone they loved so dearly was dead? Better they ran away, left, didn't care enough to come back. Anything but death.

"I'm so sorry," Rose whispered. She couldn't bring herself to reach out, to say anything more. Wilf took a moment, breathing shakily, then stood and walked back over to Sylvia. Rose could hear him murmuring to her, and she cried out a little. Wilf clung to her, and they both cried.

It was right about then that a door slammed downstairs and footsteps pounded up the stairs. "Luke!" Sarah Jane burst into the room and didn't stop until she had Luke wrapped in her arms. It wasn't until then that she seemed to notice everyone else in the room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and looked straight at Rose. "Where's the Doctor?"

Rose looked down, and Martha stepped forward to tell her.

*

When they decided to try to get in touch with Torchwood, they let Luke handle using Mr. Smith to hack into the Torchwood systems. It was harder than he expected (though no more than either Martha or Rose expected), so it took him a good couple of hours. "I've got in!" Luke exclaimed finally from the computer terminal, and everyone promptly clustered around. 

"Here, let me see," Martha said, taking over the keyboard and navigating through the Torchwood system. "I can only access the basic systems, but we _should_ be able to patch into the cctv... there!"

The view on the screens was disheartening - smoke and sparks and small fires. The entire Torchwood hub had been destroyed. "Switch to a different camera," Rose murmured, and Martha punched a few buttons. 

"Oh my god," Sarah Jane gasped when the new image came up on screen, and Martha pushed back from the computer a foot or so. Gwen and Ianto's bodies were sprawled haphazardly on the floor. There were a few Dalek shells in view, one still sparking and smoking from whatever destruction Jack had inevitably rained down when he found his team dead.

But what made Rose feel sick, what made her chest tighten so painfully she could hardly breathe, was the sight of Jack's body suspended by the wrists above the ground, and wires from some sort of machine snaking around his body. He obviously wasn't breathing at the moment, his head dropped forward and not the slightest hint of movement or life.

There was a moment of stillness, as they all stared in silent horror at the scene the Daleks had undoubtedly set up for any allies of Torchwood to see, and then the stillness was shattered when Jack's head snapped up and his pained gasp crackled over the speakers as his heart started again. Not a second later, the gasp turned into a scream as the wires came to life, pumping him with more electricity than any body could stand.

"Turn it off," Sarah Jane whispered, turning Luke's face away from the screen. The electricity cut out abruptly when Jack's head fell forward again, and Martha cut the connection.

"I'll go downstairs and put the kettle on," she heard Wilf say softly after a moment, and Sylvia followed him. Sarah Jane pulled Luke aside and murmured to him, making certain he was all right. Of course he _wasn't_ , none of them were, but it was something normal, something instinctive, just like Wilf going to put the kettle on and the sick, twisted-up feeling in Rose's gut.

"Were you close?" Martha asked eventually, still staring at the blank screen over Rose's shoulder. Rose could see her fingers twitching out of the corner of her eye, as if Martha wanted to bring the feed up again for some reason. Rose couldn't articulate a reason, but she understood the desire.

"We were, once," Rose replied, finally looking away from the computer and to the boarded-up window. "Long time ago, though. What 'bout you?"

"Yeah," Martha said faintly. "We were close." Rose didn't say anything, just reached out for Martha's hand and clutched it tightly. Martha's hand tightened instinctively around hers, and didn't loosen.

They sat like that until Sylvia and Wilf brought the tea up, two scared and lonely young women taking what little comfort they could get.

*

It was almost a full day before the Daleks came for them. Whatever they'd intended to do, Rose was almost certain they'd succeeded - she and Martha and the Nobles and the Smiths were not exactly a fearsome army, especially since they had no power to fight back. Oh, they had Rose's gun, they had Mr. Smith, but... if there was no TARDIS, no Doctor, no _Torchwood_ , even... they didn't have a chance.

It was by far the most hopeless situation Rose had ever found herself in.

Luke was asleep with his headphones on, his head in Sarah Jane's lap. Wilf and Sylvia were huddled on the loveseat, Sylvia's head on Wilf's shoulder, both of their eyes squeezed tightly shut. Rose glanced over at Martha, who was peering through a crack between the boards used on the window.

"A-TTEN-TION! YOU HAVE BEEN LA-BELED AS EN-E-MIES OF THE DA-LEK EM-PIRE!" came the grating, electronic voice outside. Rose shuddered and stepped to the window next to Martha. "YOU WILL PRE-SENT YOUR-SELVES FOR EX-TER-MI-NA-TION!"

"You still got a gun?" Rose murmured.

"Yeah," Martha said, not looking away from the window. "You?"

"Yeah." There was a silent agreement, and they headed downstairs to get their weapons. Rose considered stopping and saying goodbye or something to Wilf, Sarah Jane, but... there was nothing to say, at this point. Martha seemed to realize it, too, though she hesitated in the doorway. Both guns were in the entryway, and Martha checked to make sure the safety was off while Rose slung the strap of her gun over her shoulder.

"THIS IS YOUR FI-NAL WAR-NING!" the Dalek spokesman announced. "YOU WILL PRE-SENT YOUR-SELVES FOR EX-TER-MI-NA-TION!"

Rose glanced at Martha, a reckless smile playing at her lips. "You heard 'em," she said. "We will present ourselves." 

Martha mirrored her smile and nodded. "Damn right, we will." She reached out and squeezed Rose's hand quickly, and then they opened the front door and stepped outside. "Here we are!" Martha shouted, and they both hefted their guns, shooting quickly. Martha's gun, of course, didn't do much good, but they'd known that before they'd come out. Rose got off two shots before a Dalek somewhere cried, "YOU WILL FACE MAX-I-MUM EX-TER-MI-NA-TION!"

There was a flash, and everything burned for a moment. And then there was nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally intended to be the first loop in a time loop fic, where only Rose and Jack remembered the changes, and they had to get from this outcome to the canonical outcome. Sadly, not only did I never write the remaining loops, but I can't for the life of me remember how they were intended to go. 
> 
> Still, it stands on its own pretty well, I think, if extremely depressingly.


End file.
